Département Hommes, Natures, Sociétés, UMR 7206 Éco-anthropologie et Ethnobiologie, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, CP 135, 57 rue Cuvier, 75005, Paris, France,
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2013 Dec;13(4):916-29. doi: 10.3758/s13415-013-0171-9.
In primates, the perception of bitter taste may be an essential mechanism for avoiding the ingestion of bitter, and often toxic, substances. Bitterness sensitivity varies across the different primate species and, for bitter thioure substances (e.g., phenylthiocarbamide-PTC), within species. Primates respond to bitterness by displaying aversive affective reactions, and whether these serve for conspecifics as information on the taste of food is still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the response to two bitter substances (quinine and PTC) in 11 primate species (N = 29 individuals) hosted at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, in relation to their main diet tendency and weaning age. We tested primate reactions to bitterness with a two-bottle method. The study individuals showed a strong aversion to bitter taste, minimizing consumption of both bitter solutions. All of the individuals were PTC-taster phenotypes, but the degrees of sensitivity to PTC varied among the individuals. Across-species comparisons revealed that whereas the degree of frugivory of the species had a negative effect on the consumption of bitter solutions by the individuals, a later weaning age seems to be a better predictor for the occurrence of aversive affective reactions. Although the low sample size does not allow for excluding interindividual variability, our results support the hypothesis that affective reactions to bitterness may be trustworthy information for conspecifics during the learning process. Thus, the evolution of the appropriate perceiver systems to convert affective displays into true affective signals could be a shared trait among human and nonhuman primates.
在灵长类动物中，对苦味的感知可能是避免摄入苦味且通常有毒的物质的一种重要机制。苦味敏感度在不同的灵长类物种之间存在差异，并且在同种物种内，对于苦味硫脲类物质（例如苯硫脲-PTC）也是如此。灵长类动物通过表现出厌恶的情感反应来对苦味做出反应，而这些反应是否为同种动物提供了关于食物味道的信息尚不清楚。本研究的目的是调查 11 种灵长类物种（N = 29 只个体）对两种苦味物质（奎宁和 PTC）的反应，这与它们的主要饮食倾向和断奶年龄有关。我们使用双瓶法测试了灵长类动物对苦味的反应。研究个体对苦味表现出强烈的厌恶感，最大限度地减少了对两种苦味溶液的消耗。所有个体都是 PTC 味觉表型，但个体对 PTC 的敏感性程度存在差异。跨物种比较表明，物种的果实采食量与个体对苦味溶液的消耗呈负相关，而晚断奶年龄似乎是产生厌恶情感反应的更好预测指标。尽管样本量较小不能排除个体间的变异性，但我们的结果支持这样一种假设，即对苦味的情感反应可能是学习过程中同种动物的可靠信息。因此，将情感表现转化为真实情感信号的适当感知系统的进化可能是人类和非人类灵长类动物的共同特征。
